Sony Electronics president talks 4K, PS4 with CNET: CNET News Video

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CNET News Video: Sony Electronics president talks 4K, PS4 with CNET

4:16 /
28 February 2013

CNET sits down with Phil Molyneux, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, during an event hosted by the company at the Natural History Museum in New York. He tells us why people will buy 4K and why Sony didn't reveal much about the PS4 at last week's event.

-I'm Shara Tibken with CNET News.
And today, I have with me Phil Molyneux, President and COO of Sony Electronics.
Today, Sony hosted an event in New York to show some of its new products that it's recently announced.
So, Phil, maybe, to start, could you kind of talk to us about what recent announcements we've seen from Sony?
-Hi.
-You know, what you guys are showing here today?
-Yes, with pleasure.
Actually, what we've done today is showed a
wide range of new products that we're bringing to market.
Some of them we showed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
So, right behind us is a great example.
This is a new 55-inch and 65-inch 4K ultra high-definition TV and just to put that into context for you, these products can give you a visual display that is four times the resolution of FULL HD.
-For consumer, I think a normal average consumer who would look at this, you know, would say the picture is beautiful, but I think it's hard to differentiate between normal HD.
So, what are you guys doing to kind of show the benefits of 4k and make sure--
-Yeah.
-people know, you know, why-- why should you spend, you know, thousands of dollars on this where you can buy, you know, regular HD TV.
-Yeah.
So, of course, our marketing campaign will be coming in shortly as we bring these products to market and then our consumer messaging or messages to our consumers
Will make it clear on what is the benefit.
So brighter colors, higher quality picture, you know, real-life picture quality are what they can experience at home.
Better audio output.
But I think the real key for the consumer will be, when you go to retail and you see Sony's 4K ultra high-definition TVs and you compare it to HD, you just go, "I want that one." That's already history, right?
-Along with, you know, some of the hurdles, you know,
people-- not necessarily telling the difference, I think content is clearly a big issue for 4K.
-Uh-huh.
-You guys had talked about this, you know, new video offering, but you know-- that you're planning to roll out this summer.
-Right.
-Are there any more details you can give us about that?
Or explain a little more--
-'Cause it's so--
-you know, how that's gonna work.
-Yeah, let me give you a bit more of a flavor on the content side.
So, we have a very complex processor that our brilliant engineers have developed.
What it enables the TV to
be able to do is you can take broadcast content feed into the TV, internet content because it's connected to TV or Blu-Ray, one of the 7000 discs that I mentioned Blu-Ray disc and it will upscale it.
-Okay.
-In other words, improve the picture quality dramatically, so the contents out there that we can make it excellent.
And then the native content, 4K content, which is now starting to proliferate.
Many movies have been shot in 4K native content in Hollywood today.
We're also re-mastering content as we did for 84-inch TV.
-So, last week or, you know, recently, you guys had your another major announcement for Sony.
It doesn't directly fall under you, but I think it's pretty relevant--
-Yeah.
-to what you're-- what you ever see and that was the PlayStation 4.
-Yeah.
-So, I think one of the-- one of the criticisms are, you know, I think one thing people were surprised about, there weren't as many details.
There was no actual hardware shown.
You know, was that deliberate?
Is this not ready yet?
You're just not ready to show it.
You know, what's going on?
-I think, you know, we take pride and when we show our product that it's fully functional so, you know, I'm off to the product launch itself and we wanna show the consumers the best right out the gate.
That's important.
So, you know, we bring the TVs today, these, you know, pre-production samples, but they're stunning and they work to the level that
we want them to work, but we need them to work for consumers.
So, we showed them today.
-Okay.
-So, you know, give us a little bit of time.
We won't disappoint you.
-Great.
Well, thank you Phil.
-My pleasure.
Thanks a lot for your time.
-Thank you.